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Open letter slates UK’s education policy

May 10, 2018

Open letter signed by over 100 artists, including Grayson Perry, slates UK’s education policy

The Art Newspaper | Gareth Harris

More than 100 artists, including 15 Turner prize winners, have raised concerns about the exclusion of arts and creative subjects from the English Baccalaureate qualification (EBacc) offered in UK secondary schools. Grayson Perry, Lubaina Himid, Gillian Wearing and Jeremy Deller are among the signatories who have written to the Guardian newspaper, saying that the policy conceived by the former education secretary Michael Gove in 2010 “will seriously damage the future of many young people in this country”.

The EBacc requires pupils to study a minimum of seven GCSEs, including maths and a language, but the options do not include any arts subjects. Schools are subsequently forced to concentrate on these core subjects, with arts options increasingly excluded, say campaigners. In 2013, Gove reversed his plans to scrap GCSEs completely and replace them with the EBacc; the government now wants 90% of GCSE pupils to choose the EBacc combination by 2025…read more